The Servants' Quarters

Tuesday morning on the packed tube the free papers are mounting up behind the seats, goggle-eyed headlines about swine flu make me feel queasy. Someone sneezes on the train and you start to worry. You can't even get a common cold right now without a feeling that it may be fatal. I'm going to avoid the panic feeding headlines of the papers. It's no way to start the day.

Wednesday morning at the retirement home in Leamington where my Grandad lives, we spend our time drinking tea. He doesn't say a lot but he smiles and he looks better than the last time we saw him. An old woman we knew from years ago demands the biscuits and takes the last remaining chocolate one. She then demands to know when dinner is. As they prepare to wheel her to the dining room she refuses to bend her knee so they can get her foot onto the foot rest of her wheelchair, claiming she's been bending her knee one too many times this lifetime. A nice lady who smiles a lot asks when her husband is coming downstairs and she has to be reminded that he died eight months ago. Her face looks sad for a while but there's something telling her she's been through these emotions before and she acknowledges it.

Later a new recruit to the home comes and sits in the room we're in looking for company. At the moment he looks quite sprightly, fresh faced even, for such a place. He asks what time the prayer meeting is. He's waiting for something to happen. For some reason, throughout the week, my mind keeps returning to his slightly awkward expression as he sits there waiting.

Sunday morning, the traffic is busy on the Embankment. I see the sign pictured above by the entrance to the mews houses off Cheyne Walk, round the corner from where Keith Richards used to live. I'd like to live in a mews house with an instruction for drivers of vehicles, to walk their horses under my archway. Mews houses are great. They used to be for the servants. Now you need a million quid to live in one. Incidentally, if anyone has a mews house I can live in, please let me know.If you can pick me up in a horse driven carriage so much the better. Ta.